What if I just want to be President of the United States?

We hear every day, and we have heard for the last two years, about Mitt Romney's changing positions. He wants to protect a woman's right to control her body; the same day, he says he is firmly pro-life.  President Obama modeled his health-care bill after the Massachusetts plan that Romney implemented when he was governor, yet Romney would repeal "Obamacare"  on Day One of his presidency (except for the parts that everybody likes, such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions).

I'm sure it's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter and generally vote blue.  I am not posting this to try to slam Romney, believe it or not.

While I will add that his aggressive behavior to Jim Lehrer during the first debate, and his "47 percent" comments, have not endeared him to me, my overriding impression of Romney is that he just wants to be president.  Period.  He wants to be president of the United States, and that desire seems to be his substance.  I respect his devotion to his church and family, and I can respect his ambition.  But after two years--even four years, remembering him from the 2008 Republican primaries-- all I can say I really know about a Romney presidency is that he wants to be president.

Now, normally showing that you're "hungry" for a job is a good thing.  In fact, the first time I ever realized the similarity of running for president to a 2-year job interview was in 2000, the first time George W. Bush ran.   I got the distinct impression that he didn't want the job he was interviewing for.  To me, he didn't have that fire in his belly, that sense of urgency that usually comes through in a candidate's interviews and speeches.   I had never noticed that before in any presidential candidate.

So, I keep saying to myself, it should be a good thing that Governor Romney wants so badly to be president of the United States.  Usually wanting a job means you'll take it seriously and you know why you want it, what the job will satisfy in you and what you want to accomplish in the job.

But there's something missing.  I still have no idea why he wants to be president, why it matters to him.      Yes, on many--perhaps most-- days during the campaign he has expressed differing philosophical views about the role of government than Obama.  (In the debate last week, they suddenly sounded more alike).    Maybe he does believe in less government, and maybe a hell of a lot less federal government in people's lives, than Obama does.

I realize that, as I started this post, I said I wasn't going to harp on Romney's changing positions.   But I think that's why my impression of him is what it is.   I don't know what's at his core.  If he is elected, I have no idea what would or would not change in the first month, three months, six months, one year, of a Romney presidency.  I can't recall ever feeling this way about a candidate.


Mitt Romney, more than anything, puzzles me.  And he points out a conundrum that is larger than himself.   What does it mean that a candidate just wants to be president?  If that's the case for Romney, is that enough to make him an effective president and a serious, circumspect leader?  Is it enough just to really, really, really want the job?

Guru-ma: Back to school

Guru-ma: Back to school: The "Wedding Cake"  building at Cal Tech, where I visited last week. This week--last week--next week--lots of us will head back to schoo...

Back to school

The "Wedding Cake"  building at Cal Tech, where I visited last week.

This week--last week--next week--lots of us will head back to school.  

When I was a kid, I loved going back to school.   I was usually bored in the summers, and missed my friends.  I also tend to like an imposed structure, or purpose, in my life and school provided that.   (And, luckily, I was interested in most of what school had to offer).

I'm still going back to school.  I've only had a couple of jobs in my life in which I didn't have to go back to school.  Something about school obviously clicks with me. I've worked in three colleges and three high schools, constituting most of my career.  I have yet to figure out exactly what it is about school that resonates with me.

And as I creak my way back to school this year, rev up the school gears again, I'm still wondering what it is about school that has always drawn me in.  I read about school and college even on my vacations, even when I swear I won't.  I can't help it.

So what's up with school, as a profession?

(Hmm . . . I've just noticed that this building, above, looks faintly religious, as many college buildings do.  Lots of college architecture is modeled after Gothic cathedrals or 60s-era churches.   Maybe there's something to that?  Check out this Arts & Sciences classroom building at USC--Univ of Southern California--which I visited last Wednesday).

The slab of vulnerability . . .

Click on photo to enlarge

I started this blog to explore the notion of leaving one's country and coming home.   A Canadian friend and colleague at my school in Zurich was eager to hear about the adjustment of coming back to your home country.  I didn't know what kind of adjustment issues to expect when I moved back to the States after five years overseas in two countries, but I expected to feel that I was "adjusting"  all the time.  I expected to be bombarded with culture shock.

In fact, I didn't feel that way at all.  Many elements of life were a relief:  I knew how to find an apartment in the States.  I discovered that, after five years of letting myself live in the housing that was provided or found for me, on or very near campus, it was exciting to look for an apartment in Washington, DC.   (And when is finding an apartment anything other than a chore)?   Knowing from afar how the system worked was reassuring.

I couldn't name it during those five years, but living in a new country made me vulnerable in way I'd never been before.  I don't know if others of you have experienced this, but I now realize that the foundation of me the expat was resting, 24-7, on a concrete slab of helplessness.   I don't mean to be overdramatic--and maybe this is just me-- but I can see now that part of my day-to-day Amy-ness that I lived pre-2003 (pre-India, pre-Switzerland) was replaced with a layer of vulnerability, helplessness, openness, fear, blank slate, whatever you want to call it.  It has taken me four years back in my own country to know this about myself.

To illustrate this, I can attach the vulnerability to a particular element of life, in both places.   In India, the snakes on campus and the big gecko in my kitchen took the rug out from under me, 24-7.   There was nary a single second of any day in three years on campus that I didn't look for that cobra on my office window (this had happened to my predecessor) or take a step back when I flipped on the fluorescent light in my kitchen, for the disappearing tail of the huge gecko that lurked or lived in the masonry walls.

In Switzerland, the label on that slab of vulnerability read GERMAN, two kinds of German that are different enough to be different languages.  You are not the same person anymore when you can't read your own mail you take out of the mailbox when you get home:  the stuff from your insurance company, the political candidates'  flyers, the newsletters from the gemeinde (the county).  I can begin to imagine how immigrants to the US feel when they arrive here and don't speak English.   Part of me felt ashamed, part of me felt helpless, literally like a baby in an adult parallel universe.

On the other hand, I did get used to hearing another language around me in daily life.   In fact, when I would come back to the US in the summers, it would almost feel too easy that I could understand all the announcements over the PA system in the airports and recognize the newspaper headlines.

So when I moved back to the US, I was excited because I could speak the language and talk to the landlord and live in whatever part of the city, or suburbs, I wished.   I could make small talk with the people next to me in the elevator, in the grocery cashier's line.  I could talk to the tourists on the DC Metro or bus, if I wanted to, or if they asked me directions.  I could introduce myself to my neighbors.

Click on photo to enlarge

And the opposite was also true:  because I came back to the States to work in a French school, where the classes are taught in French and a majority of the emails and the meetings are in French, I felt as though I was still living in another country.   French is the only other language I understand fairly well.  I still work at the Lycee, and I still feel as though I go to another country every day.

Because of this last fact--that I came back to go to a little island of France every day, and live in one of the most diverse cities in the US--I never felt the downpour of culture shock that I anticipated.  At the same time, speaking the language and knowing my home culture began to chip away at the slab of vulnerability.

The real adjustment, however, has been . . . .   well, I will save that for another post.  And welcome anyone's reactions.

Trust, in another culture

Today, with my mother, we saw "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."  It was better than I had expected. I had expected stereotypes--of the Brits and the Indians and the relationship between them--and many of those stereotypes were played out.  But it also had a Bollywood feel to it, as well as seriousness:  it was a movie full of people in their 60s and 70s faced with how to afford to live in retirement, what to do with their lives, or both.  My mother was quite sobered by the lives played by Judy Dench and Bill Nighy and other wonderful actors.

And as my mother told me, I saw different things in the film than she did.  I saw, literally, that I'd been in exactly the same place as the actors in the movie.   I saw elements of myself, a foreigner going to work in India who tried at times to put up resistance to the sensory overload and cultural difference that India is.  It reminded me how embarrassed I am that I felt that way:  that I wasn't one of those who embraced it all with positive spirit.

One of the characters in the film laments that she never knows what to trust, or whom to trust, in India:  the waiter tells her the milk is pasteurized when she knows he's lying; the group were given airbrushed pictures of a palatial building where they would stay, which turned out to be a falling-down grand hotel.  And I remember feeling the same way.  By the middle of my second year, I was travelling with a friend from the States during the spring break and had completely hit the wall with my cynicism:  How did I know if that shawl was really cashmere?   They were all pure cashmere, supposedly, but how could they be?

And I suppose that's the question at the heart of our journey into a new culture:  Whom do you trust?  What can you trust about it?  Is the building you're trying to find really around the corner?  Does Yes mean Yes when it's said with the speaker's head moving side to side, as if saying No?  So many layers of language and culture get in the way.

I use the example of India, but I feel it keenly in my work culture now (which is French).  And I know that anyone coming to our country, the US, must feel the same way.   We're a country, after all, that only knows one language.  What can you trust?  Whom can you trust?  How do you tell the difference?  I think the answer is complex, and lies in meeting people where they are; putting oneself in the other's shoes, to the extent you can.

How do you know whom to trust, in entering any new culture, even at home? Work culture, college culture . . .  Patience, positive or optimistic attitude, watchfulness, keen observation, trying to learn the language, somehow showing this new country you value your experience there?  All of the above?   Tell me your thoughts, because it's important.

Springs of Peace

Yesterday, June 24, was the birthday of one of my sisters.  She's brilliant and beautiful and one of the most strong and generous people in this world.  I admire her so much I'm too awestruck to say it to her.

So I think she would appreciate me posting this honor of her, and in memory of Sylvia Gift Nabukeera.   Sylvia--"Sylvie" or "Gift"--was a student who graduated from Mahindra United World College of India (the international high school where I worked from 2003 - 2006).  Sylvia left on a journey last year on June 24 to go back home to Uganda.  She stopped off in Nairobi and was killed, her body found on the streets almost a month later.

Sylvia, too, was brilliant and beautiful and funny and strong.  She was always singing, and could laugh off almost anything, including a snake bite on campus and the trip to the hospital an hour away.

I was reminded of this anniversary yesterday by Sylvia's friends from MUWCI, who have started an NGO to fulfill her goal:  providing drinkable water for her village in Uganda.   They wrote a much more moving tribute to Sylvie than this one.  I was reminded that Springs of Peace http://springsofpeace.wordpress.com/about/ has raised $5,000 toward their goal of $20,000, a great accomplishment in one year.  

I was reminded to contribute (which I hadn't yet done, to my chagrin).   Sylvia's description of her project is moving.  If anyone could have done something about it, Sylvia could.   She was a ball of poised energy and passion.  Let's hope we can help her project succeed.

Those who've started this project--Barbara, Julianne, Rachel, Shane, and Pravina--are smart ladies who know what they're doing.  (Hell, they knew what they were doing much better than I did, even as seventeen-year-olds).  You can trust them with your money!  Please give whatever you can to help the people Sylvia cared about, to Springs of Peace http://springsofpeace.wordpress.com/about/

I didn't know I would have two anniversaries to mark yesterday, one happy and one sad.  I'm grateful for my sister's happy day.  Let's turn the sad one into as much happiness for others as we can, for Sylvia's sake.

I had a thought-provoking conversation with a good friend recently about dual citizenship.

Him:  What a strange notion, having two citizenships.  How can you have allegiance to two (or even more) countries?   What if they are countries in conflict with each other, each making demands on you, such as mandatory military service or civic service?

Me:  I get your point, but I think the majority of people with dual citizenship are born into it; they don't acquire it.   I know people with dual citizenship who are thoroughly bi-cultural and bilingual:  they've lived in both countries, have a parent from each country; speak both languages.  This is who they are.   What can you do about that?

Him:  True . . . You've had more experience with that than I have.   It's complicated:  There are people with only US citizenship, for example, who have never lived in this country.   Are they as American as someone who immigrated here and became a citizen?  (And by the way, the requirement that you have to be born in the US to become president is archaic . . .)

Me:  Yes, it's complicated.    Are you saying that countries shouldn't allow dual citizenship?

Him:   Well . . .

I don't have any answers.   I'm not sure there are answers, but it's a fascinating topic in this world where people are more mobile than ever.    What do you think?